On Atheism, Religion and the Human Being

Very recently I ‘accidentally’ stepped into a burgeoning discussion on WordPress. The question was simple and innocuous enough: is a child born with an innate sense of God, or in a broader sense, the numinous?

To a philosopher, such a question is a very personal one. You think about it and you answer it according to your own remembrances, memories, and experiences. Sadly the question was going to be caught, handcuffed and dragged through the streets to be tortured by one particularly strident and defensive ‘ism’.

I suppose the question was custom-made to being hijacked mostly by atheists, and I should have been a bit more wary to even try to wade on the shore of that stream. The water was acid on my bare feet.

I’ve never liked atheism. I tried it for a few years and I found it to be a dead religion, devoid of awe, beyond short-lived awareness of pretty sunsets, flowers and waterfalls, perhaps the enjoyment of sex; devoid of joy, since true joy can only be known on that spiritual plane atheists abhor and denigrate every chance they get.

Essentially, you are born to die. You can be no more than a superior intelligent animal and all accomplishments are but the results of a pointless evolution which cannot lead anywhere since there is no continuity beyond a mindless material level. There is no purpose to life beyond propagating itself, again, for no purpose. Though atheism denies “luck”, that being a spooky goddess we do not speak of in fear of losing our atheist badge, in its philosophy everything is happen-chance.

Self-professed atheism is a recent phenomenon, at least in the Western White Christian World, stemming mostly from deliberately mis-interpreted works of Charles Darwin and his speculations on species adaptation which he called natural evolution.

Here’s the contradiction. While life is pointless, evolution is of foremost importance and it is everything. Everything we can conceive of today has evolved… from? Well, we can’t say ‘from nothing’ that being too uncomforably close to ‘creation’ so we’ll just invent some beginning. But it can’t be anything that could remotely be connected to the effects of “divine” intervention. The perfect atheist world has a walled border; a zero tolerance policy to infiltration or refuge seeking from any sort of spirit, or spirit thought.

Though it is absolutely pointless, nevertheless atheism allows conditions such as love, caring, compassion, even empathy. Somehow, as curious as that seems to me, such unnatural conditions evolved from the same “Big Bang” and resultant muck and mire soup everything came from. Why such conditions settled on mankind, along with their too obvious opposites such as hate, racism, misogyny, egregious violence and spreading bigotry, evolution explains it. How? Dare I say by faith? Indeed, my own discovery is that it takes more faith to believe in atheism than in deism! That naturally explains why atheists have to propagate their belief by force of demagoguery, just like their opposites, in Christian “fuddlementalism”.

If everything stems from evolution, then religion is a natural product of evolution, therefore anything “happening” within those sacred halls of mostly nonsense is also a natural product of evolution. Can’t be any other explanation. So, why are atheists so vehemently anti-religious since everything is a product of their belief system? Could it be because atheism is not “science based” but a religion in its own right, its tenets subject to change without notice? And they have changed, for example on the subject of eugenics, for which we have Hitler to thank.

I’ve always known that atheism is a counter-religion, a reaction to the extremes of primarily Catholicism and Evangelicalism. Countering means engaging on the battle field and the battle field requires missionaries.

In that regard, Atheism lost one of its most strident mouth-pieces and missionary: Christopher Hitchens, who died of cancer in 2011. In my opinion, if that’s the best Atheism can come up with to prove its point, it may as well throw down its sword and yield to its opponents. You lost the Cup, go home quietly, don’t break any hearts or any stained glass windows on the way, and thank you very much for a century of dubious entertainment.

“The vocal fervour of today’s missionary atheism conceals a panic that religion is not only refusing to decline – but in fact flourishing.” (John Gray, The Guardian)

Indeed, despite “the obvious” the world’s religious population is currently 85% of total population and that number is not only not declining, it is projected to rise in the next 40 years.

Now I need to make a point here: religion(s) are not what matters in all of this. What matters is that we allow ourselves, and our children, the innate “right” to be spiritual beings. In that respect both, organized religions and atheism, are enemies of mankind as a full-fledged spirit-mind-body human construct. Both kill spirit, hence both deny mankind access to its ultimate claim to being a member of humanity.

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51 thoughts on “On Atheism, Religion and the Human Being”

Hi Sha’ Tara.
Before I landed on the shores of WP in an endeavour to have dialogue I ventured onto the now defunct Amazon Religious Discussion. This in the main was populated by that streak of atheistic thinking which had all the charm, appeal and logic of the Christian ‘God is a White Man’ and ‘we need is a nation run like that ‘Hand Maid’s Tale’ Book’ sort of approach. Most of them did not wish to discuss, they desired of every theist to bow down and cry out ‘At Last I See The Light!’. So toxic was it, rational and thoughtful atheists stayed away. Their knowledge of that which they hated was painfully minimal.
They proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that every strand of human thought and community is tainted by its intolerant, ignorant and unpleasant crew who in their hearts seek a totalitarian, doctrinal state.
It is a grim place when the extremists of any stripe take control.
(PS; Sorry I’ve not been around much; a very hot spell of weather’s been fuddling my brain…been writing though; Karlyn insists it’s good for my health)

Thanks for the reply, Roger and keep writing! Karlyn ‘s right about that! Anyplace is indeed a grim affair when any kind of extremist takes control, history has certainly shown that! What’s sad and so dangerous is that extremists always consider their opposition as being the extremist ones.

hooray. my experiences point to a significant thread within avid atheism which goes something like this: we like to attack the least common denominator examples when it comes to religiosity and paint the picture that this is what all spiritual inquiry looks like. which is like flaming right wingers saying that all progressives are radical socialists. atheism does not trust or like the word spiritual because you cannot look it up in a scientific glossary somewhere — in order to properly understand it you have to commit to try to experience it, which in turn means you have to evince interest in it. just like particle physics, which they adore. you have to investigate a thing on it’s own terms, not within some alien imposed framework of pre-built abstractions.

Thanks Robert. It’s good to interact mentally with individuals who can separate religiosity (false spirituality) from spirituality. To my way of thinking it is essential to realize that one is propaganda designed specifically to rob people of their connection to spirit, thus preventing them from ever becoming true humans. (One of the key factors identifying a true human from a pseudo one: a human does not kill but a religious or atheist has no such qualms.)

more & more I think it is fear which erects this barrier. unconscious perhaps, but fear, of the unknown. the scientism mindset wants ot have a neatly buttoned down world conception where matter is king and explanation for all, with no messy dependencies in the cosmos for other sorts of beings more spiritual in nature. the staunch religionists want an equally unmessy worldview where their chosen doctrinal creed, usually supplied externally and uncovered via no individual effort, wipes out any need for deeper inward investigating and affords the comforting salve of eternal salvation, whatever that might be. neither one takes responsibility within the present moment of the world situation.

Without equivocation: perfectly stated. I’m keeping your comment, it counters so many questions and pronouncements around these age-old issues. I was thinking the same this morning, that much of it is fear, and from both camps. Indeed.

Thanks for that comment. On scientism and religionism, you say and quote: ” neither one takes responsibility within the present moment of the world situation.” Essentially, as stated in your greater comment, that is escapism. I would have no issue with either if they minded their own business, going about their lives based on their personal beliefs if they weren’t so vocal and aggressive in defending and pushing their beliefs on “me”. Why not just accept that we all have different life experiences and have the freedom to make whatever choices, as long as they do not negatively affect life around us? Why so much talk about freedom (John 8:36, the Bible: So if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed.)then go about forcefully denying it to anyone who doesn’t agree with their beliefs? Something doesn’t add up.

I want to say two things. Children are born in touch with the angels (whatever you choose to call them) and the spirit. Force, Is, great father/mother. Children don’t choose “god” they know all about it. The run on this planet and its consequences are known to them at birth and then life happens. There is no other explanation for prodigies, seers, the exceptionally wise or compassionate. The second thing, evolution and all that – Dude, it wasn’t aliens. But it was.

I don’t mean to sound flippant, but how do you try atheism for a few years (like you’re trying something different just to give it a try). I don’t understand how one can be an atheist unless one absolutely believes there is no God. If you’re not sure, you’re an agnostic….which I suspect is actually what you were, but weren’t comfortable being on the fence, and felt a need to decide more definitively….hence you “tried atheism.”

Again, I didn’t say that to be critical — these aren’t simple questions (unless one is a relatively simple thinker, which most people probably are, and can’t help being), and no one has all the answers. When it comes to the ‘big questions,’ living with uncertainty certainly isn’t something one wants to settle for, but I see it as a mature and courageous decision. To my mind, it beats being dead certain about the unknowable, i.e., that there is or isn’t a God.

Thanks for commenting, mistermuse… Why can’t one “try on” atheism then conclude it isn’t for her? I don’t see any problem with that. It’s a doctrine, after all, not something measurable by hard scientific evidence, just a choice of belief. Non-belief is a belief. Before one chooses to not believe in God, one must know about God, about the existence of God. One cannot reject what does not exist. Even if God is but an idea, it is a powerful one, probably the most powerful concept extant among man. To deny its existence is not only foolish, but futile. “God” is only unknowable to those who choose to not know. I’ve explained it ad nauseam: I know that God exists and I know quite a bit about its character, or nature. It follows therefore that I don’t have to believe IN God. I have a truck in my driveway, I don’t have to believe IN trucks. Once you know something as a fact it no longer requires faith. Religions are based on faith because they don’t want people to know what God is or to understand it. Counter-religions such as atheism are also based on faith.

Spiritual people on the other hand, are well aware of aspects of spirit they speak of because they normally and naturally interact with them. These never worship and never pray to the spirits, they know better.

To go back to your first question, no one and I don’t care how “atheistic” they profess to be, can ever be absolutely sure that God does not exist. That simply isn’t possible and the reason is: evidence! If 85% of the entire population of this planet believes in the existence of God in some form or other, the 15% who refuse to believe it aren’t the determining factor. The evidence is on the side of those who believe, and that belief by itself guarantees that God exists. It is God’s base of support and as a concept, that is God’s source of power. In context, read: The Construction and Maintenance of a Nature Spirit in chapter 6 – Relative Realities from “Stalking the Wild Pendulum” by Itzhak Bentov. (https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/376895.Stalking_the_Wild_Pendulum)

I will admit readily that for you, whether God exists, or does not, is unknowable. For me, the issue was settled once I admitted the evidence to myself. There is other evidence for the existence of God but that takes us into “ancient aliens” and archeological pre-diluvian findings, decipherings, and of course, the fact that this world is covered with unexplainable structures whose construction, presence and purpose make no sense to Homo Sapiens. Were these ancient architects man’s first “gods”? Most likely, yes. Was Homo Sapiens made “in the image” of these beings? Again most likely yes. Did they leave us here? Again, yes. Why? That remains to be discovered.

I appreciate the discussion, and I agree that the existence of God is unknowable….which is why I respect the position of agnostics more than atheists — at least, those atheists who claim to know (as opposed to believe) there is no God. For the record, I’m a deist (deists don’t believe in the God of any religion, but believe in an impersonal creator who has left the universe to its own processes since creating it, and has never intervened or interacted with man).

It is naysayer time, and I say “Nay!” to each of you. I am a SPIRITUAL ATHEIST. I do not believe in any god, or any super-being of any kind. Children are NOT born with any idea of a god within them. All gods or super-beings are human inventions, and can only be sustained by authoritarian brainwashing. I know. I was brainwashed as a child. But my mind was too strong to allow that brainwsshing to persist as I grew older, and became able to think for myself. I undid thst brainwadhing, and now I am free to look for myself.
You can call atheism a religion all you want, but it is not contiguous one atheist to the next. Yes, many atheists deny the existence of a spirit, but NOT ALL ATHEISTS DENY SPIRITUALITY! There are a good number of us around, but we are not a group. We don’t need others to give us our strength. We find that strength wherever we can, and from my experience, most of us find it in ourselves. But that is our choice, and no one else’s.
I would love to see a religion, any religion, make that claim for itself. None can. Religion can only be learned from outside the self. Nothing is innate, except breathing and eating. And both of those are biological processes. They do not come from the mind.
You talk about evolution, and how it is a progressive sequence of being. We started out on earth as one-celled creatures. Did those creatures believe in a god? Not impossible, but highly unlikely. One-celled beings became two-celled beings. Did they believe in a god? Again, highly unlikely. Two-celled beings became three-celled beings became ten-celled beings became 37.2 billion-celled beings (the numbrr of cells in a average adult human being). When did gods come into the picture? The cells that make up our bodies today are identical to the cells that existed 4 billion years ago, give-or-take a few 100 million. When did gods appear? We don’t know about other species, but for humans gods first appeared when early humanoids learned about fear. First they feared nature, and tried to placate it. Then someone invented gods, and taught others to fear those gods to the inventor’s favour. The rest is history.

But, spirit is a whole nother matter. One-celled beings had a connection to each other, and that connection was life, or spirit. Every being from those first one-celled beings have had that same connection–life, and that life is spirit. Today, our 37.2 billion cells have life, and they have spirit. Through them we have life, and we have spirit. Every living being everywhere has life, and every living being anywhere has spirit. Spirit is what connects every one of us to every other one of us. Not just humans to humans, or sentient beings to sentient beings. All brings to all beings! Life is connected to life!

Hey rawgod, good response. So, as with religionists, there are many different kinds of atheists. However, one reacts or responds to the most vocal and “stick-together” types who form self-supporting groups on social media, for example, using same pattern of demagoguery as their estranged brothers in the faith.

You claim to be a spiritual atheist, which would be a total contradiction if I didn’t make the effort to understand that you do not reject some sort of “spirit” world or connection for yourself, but you definitely reject the idea of a particular male God as a super-being who created all things out of nothing and who demands abject servitude, worship and desires to be prayed to even if he never deigns reply/respond to any such prayers. So you are also a kinda-sorta agnostic-atheist, picking and choosing what fits, what doesn’t? A lot of atheists would take strong exception to that, I think, based on my own experiences with Neo-Darwinists.

So, to my claim that a human being consists of spirit, mind and a physical body, does that still hold for you? Are we in agreement here that “Life” is indeed more than a physical manifestation and better understood as Spirit, meaning a living force? If I insist on Mind as necessary to complete a human, where would you place that aspect of us, if you do at all?

Are we Mind? We already know what happens to our “37.2 billion cells” (thanks for that info, I keep forgetting the round number!) when we physically terminate, what happens to Mind and that particular part of “Spirit” that we are as a part of Life? Is there continuity, or does that scatter out into the ether and whatever was “me” no longer exists in any shape or form?

Personally I believe such questions must be engaged if we are ever to decide what we are supposed to be in the grand scheme of things. If we can ask the questions, they have answers beyond the usual realm of speculation, assumption and faith.

Hey, S’T, I am just on a break from writing a new post that talks to the basic questions that you just asked–I hope. But since your questions are on a whole different level of thought, I will attempt to answer them (if I can keep them all straight in my mind, lol), according to my philosophical take on life.
1. Unasked question – If you only take note of the loud-mouths, you cannot understand the essence of a thing. That would be like only listening to Trump on what it takes to be an American. Would that be a good thing to base your knowledge on? I would bet that if you give an honest answer, it would be an outright, absolute “NO!” So why would you do that with atheists? Believing Trump would be the easy way out, but truth is seldom easy to come by.
2. Do I pick and choose what fits and what doesn’t? Definitely not. I look inside myself to see what is there. No super-being is inside me, nor is there any reason to believe there is a super-being outside of me. The truth of this matter, for me, is there is no reason to even consider there is a super-being anywhere. As long as I look only inside myself to see what is there, I see nothing to even suggest looking to see if there is a super-being anywhere. Such are the stuff of comic magazines and religious organizations. Even as I said to you in my above comment, thrre is no god in a new-born baby until some authority figure puts it there.
3. Do I care one whit about what anyone else says, atheist or not? No! When it comes to life, the only auth
ority I can trust is me. I grew up trusting others, where did that get me? I grew up thinking there was strength in numbers, where did that get me. In my math, the strongest number in the w
orld is 1. It is undivisable. When you multiply it with itself, it is still 1. Yes, you can add to it, or subtract from it, but still it is there. 1 cannot be broken, 1 is forever.
4. Do I believe in the unholy trinity, me, myself, and I? Or spirit, mind, and body? Yes. Only spirit must come first, it surrounds mind and body. Mind comes second, it drives the body. Body comes last, it is ephemeral, time-limited. Body succumbs to mind, and mind succumbs to spirit. But there is a problem there. The spirit must be awake to rule the trio. If spirit is asleep, the mind can drive where it wants. If the mind is asleep, the body might go somewhere, or do something, but without purpose. The mind can have its own purpose, but it cannot have life purpose. Only spirit has life purpose. So believes rawgod, lol.
5. Where do spirit and mind come in? I think I just unwittingly answered that question. But in case I didn’t, I’ll try a different option. Body is biological, all kinds of organs and muscles and bones, etc., working together to maintain physical life. The mind consists of mental processes, trying to tell the body how to best get what it wants. But, the mind is also there to make choices the body cannot make on its own. It is like the computer that causes the machine to do the work that needs to be done. It is more than artificial intelligence, but it is less than the programmer, or spirit. Spirit is what makes life worthwhile. It brings purpose to living. It brings purpose to existence itself. It joins all life-forms together. It is what causes compassion, and allows empathy. Spirit is eternal, as far as we on this physical plane are concerned. Spirit is Everything.
6. I think what you are asking next is what is death, and what, if anything, happens after death. This I would need much more time than I presently have to answer fully. But I will try to touch the high points. First, desth is a phydical thing. The body dies, and if I understand Jim the Common Atheist correctly, the mind stays alive for about six minutes after the body dies. Does that mean it takes six minutes for the mind to die, or does it take 6 minutes to detach the mind from the dead body? I cannot answer that from experience, which is what I depend on for most of my answers. But I can conjecture. The mind detaches from the body, and delivers the spirit to the area of newly dead beings. There is no word for this area in English, so this hampers my attempt at answering. For lack of a better word I call it the spirit-bank. Buddhists, possibly hindus, and probably jains have a word that has been translated as “overself,” which I used for many years, but dropped because it creates confusion by maintaining the root word self. For me, self = mind, and I think that mind dies after delivering the spirit to the spirit-bank.
But I would be amiss if I were not to say I am guessing at this part. As I said, Enblish is not a language in which to discuss the after-death. But to keep on trying, the spirit is then invited into the spirit-bank, and as it sinks in its physical life is reviewed without judgment, and that is what NDEs experience as seeing their lives before them. But that is just an aside.
The spirit sinks into the bank, and becomes one with the life inside the bank. After full absorption the bank becomes the latest spirit absorbed, in effect. If there is a continuity, and I believe there is but I cannot explain it or talk intelligently to it, it is a part of this complete being that detaches and returns to the previous plane of existence as a new life, or moves on to the next plane of existence. I do not believe it is an exact continuity, but still it seems like it is “enough so that a being on earth can discuss itself like it is a continuity.”
But as I have said, there are no words here to discuss this, and the words that I have are inadequate to the task. These words should be changed, by me or anyone else capable of correcting them.

On your last thought: Having met at least two people, or beings, in this world that seem to know these things inside themselves without actively seeking them out, I cannot agree with your assertion. But, for myself, you can make better .use of a thing when you do understand that thing. So I am torn in my answer.

And, since I know you or someone else might want too know, in my opinion there is no such thing as karma, and everyone is capable of being a soulmate, you need only work to find that out.
Love makes the world go round, but without life there can be no love, or anything else.
So speaks rawgod, LMAO.

number 1: why would I listen to demagogue atheists and not the rank and file? Because, as in all other “isms” only the loud-mouths are heard. The rest go on about their lives mostly unaware of what they believe, or not, and most of their thoughts have already been formed by those very same demagogues. If you’re looking to dialogue, you can’t respond to something that doesn’t express an opinion.

Number 2: Like me, you were brought up to believe in a “super being” who knows all, sees all and is much more likely to punish than to reward. Like me, you rejected that concept but unlike me, it would seem you did not pursue the reasoning why any sane person (85% of the world’s population believes in this character, worships it, sacrifices to it and stakes its future upon its dubious mercy-are they all automatically certifiable, and we 15% the only possibly sane on this world?) would continue the charade. I thought, no, it’s not a charade and then began the really tough quest: unravelling the reasons for man to insist on having a god. It came down to realization that “god”, while not a super being, does exist. Therein lies the rub. Denial is fine and dandy, and that is what atheism is. It doesn’t seek to unravel the cause of belief in a god, it just wants to bury the concept within a purely materialistic life. Declaring something non-existent because I can’t prove scientifically that it exists is childish. What constitutes evidence? On this world, it’s whatever those in power decide is evidence. The rest of us just better shut up if we disagree, or pay the price for being mavericks. Denying the existence of something because it is determined that the “something” doesn’t live up to certain claims made for it is an error. That thing still exists, it just doesn’t perform according to beliefs about it. Someone could claim that a “Smart car” can pull a trailer of hay bales normally assigned to a semi. Saying that the Smart car doesn’t exist when it fails to deliver is faulty reasoning. So… God exists, outside the propaganda. What is god then? Apart from the dubious claims made by 85% of the population, from observation and study of non-approved research, we can deduct that “god” was/is an alien character, or a group of alien characters, who once lived on this world. We can deduct that Homo Sapiens is not a product of evolution, but indeed the result of a deliberate act of “vandalism” perpetrated upon a humanoid species that once lived here; the cloning of a slave race to serve the aliens. We can deduct this by looking at the many constructs that continue to baffle and intrigue and over which so much ridiculous speculation and pronouncements have been made. Of course if we want to remain either proper fundamentalist religious people, of fundamentalist Neo-Darwinists, we can mock and denigrate all observations, and all recorded research that has gone into unravelling our pre-historical but relatively recent past. We can also mock and denigrate anyone who has taken the trouble to “travel” into the past and into the future and taken a serious look at the social workings of the universe and not just those of one insignificant little world on the edge of nowhere.

As I have stated before, I have done such travelling. Through one NDE, I encountered entities/beings/aliens who had interesting things to teach about universal happenings. For example, the existence of Time Lords. On earth (‘Oh Please! Pure fantasy!) such ideas are immediately confined to looney bin thinking. But I was taught a truly neat way through the denials based on lack of information and mostly deliberate mis, and dis, information and misdirection, and that is, “Believe all things, believe IN nothing.” That which rules sentient worlds chooses to hide, and for good reasons. Another good source of information is the very book that portends to speak for God: the Judeo-Christian writings themselves. The more truth you can put in a lie, the more effective will be the lie. The Bible is a massive piece of lying propaganda but the reason it remains the number one best seller is how much truth is used to cement the lie. So, I went into it looking to find how the cement was used. Here’s a very telling quote from a letter to the Ephesians:

“For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms.”

So, who are “rulers, authorities, powers”? What are spiritual forces of evil in heavenly realms? I know what the intent of the statement is, but what if I choose to follow the bouncing ball in a different direction than the writer expected? What happens if I discover, not what he hoped I would deduce, but the actual truth behind his words? Trouble! God is a Time Lord. Time Lords are spiritual forces of evil outside of Earthian awareness. Ergo why organized religions always, without fail, promote evil while disguising themselves as fronts for a benevolent “super being” as you call it. To properly engage the history of Time Lord control of this universe would mean developing an entirely new cosmology, a little beyond my abilities at the moment and beside, I doubt that I’d get anywhere with it for obvious reasons.

All that may seem off topic but not to me. I like foundations to any claim. I like evidence, not necessarily of a physical nature. I need to KNOW. You state/claim there is no “god in a new-born baby until some authority figure puts it there” and you could not be more, and crucially in error. It is not a living super-being entity that is present (not in the new born actually, but in the foetus hence, and note: the totally irrational religious fundamentalist doctrine of protecting the unborn!) That is what the Teachers explained is in fact the soul implant; the controlling apparatus that determines what a pseudo-human will accept as truth, and what it will automatically reject. Apart from that however, there is also the spirit aspect that accompanies life. That is the thing even the Time Lords could not remove from their sentient slaves. No spirit, no life.

So, to number 2, that much I know, so far.

Number 3: Yes, agreed, the self-empowered individual is its own authority. It does not accept anyone else’s ideas, be they from Socrates or Donald Trump, until such have been carefully examined to see what parts of it can fit into the S/E’s own truth. If it doesn’t fit, it is rejected outright.

Number 4: I can’t find anything that disagrees with what I know innately to be true.

Number 5: For me, spirit is the ultimate and generic “Force” that sustains life, but it is mind that generates purpose. While spirit “is”, mind is an individual matter. We, as humans, are primarily concerned with mind; it is what we actually are. We do not have to wonder, or think, about spirit, it just is, like breathing. For the individual, mind is basically everything. And mind is eternal as well as having a sense of infinity. For the mind being, nothing is impossible.

Number 6: for me, death has many aspects. The gradual, and final, disintegration of a physical body is a common, if minor one. A mind can choose to die, that is, it can choose to cease to function as a separate entity and dissolve itself into spirit. The information/experiences are “recycled” for others to use and they no longer form part of one individual. That is what I consider to be the end result for those who seek Nirvana. No longer any sense of self. That is the final death.

1) I am asking you to respond to me, as the only representative of my brand of spiritual atheism. I have no knowledge of what others are saying about their brand of atheism, nor can ANYBODY BUT ME say anything about my brand of atheism. If you want to respond to those others, please do not make me appear to be part of them.
2. Ah, but I did take a good, long, hard look at those 85% who believe in some type of deity or otherwise super-being. You probably won’t see that in my writing because I didn’t find anything there to give me a foothold to remain believing in deities. It (they) does not exist IN MY PHILOSOPHY, so why bother with them.
2a. But what I did do is realize that those who follow deist religions, or even those who deny the religion but keep the deity or deities, are merely on a different part of the spiritual journey that is life. To understand religion, or belief in deities, you must believe in them yourself. You must be a part of that community. But for me a time came when that community ceased to function for me, so I threw it away. But, did I throw all babies out with the bathwater? Not right away. I looked into other Abrahamic religions, into non-Abrahamic religions such as voodoo, witchery, druidism, devil-worship, and so on. Still I found no resonance with what was in my heart and mind, and especially my spirit. So I turned to Eastern religions and philosophies, and discovered there some very attractive theories, particularly the theory of reincarnation.
As I just wrote in a comment to someone else, I had already concluded that Abrahamic religions were impossible to live without committing their brand of sin in one full lifetime, so I postulated practice lives, where a human could live over and over in an attempt to learn how to live the perfect life. But when I broke away from the religion I was spoonfed as a child, I forgot all about practice lives… Until I discovered reincarnatioon. That was exactly what I had been looking to find in Occidental religions, but could not.
At that time the biggest Oriental religions were Buddhism, Hinduism, and Zen Buddhism. Regretfully, I somehow missed Jainism, but not finding it then probably meant my move beyond Tibetan Buddhism, the style of Buddhism I chose to follow, may have taken longer to get there. Now, please do not think I didn’t give TiBu a good chance, because I did. I studied under a rinpoche, one of those who were at a level next below to the Dalai Lama. He was an excellent teacher, and I learned a lot about life from him. I daresay my spiritual consciousness lifted itself many levels under his care. But one day I found the chink in the armour of TiBu, and the rinpoche and I had a horrible argument in front of his other acolytes, and I could not stay in his presence. There was a thing I believed that he did not, nor did 10,000 years of his predecessors. Not even the Bhudda left any words to say it, if even he considered it noteworthy. At last I was on my own, and I was able to shine with my own inner light. I was over religions, over deities, over most earthly philosophies but my own. And I was not lonely.
2b. I quote you, “Denial is fine and dandy, and that is what atheism is. It doesn’t seek to unravel the cause of belief in a god, it just wants to unravel the cause of belief in a god, it just wants to bury the concept of god within a purely materialistic life.” Is this question for real? It shows absolutely no understanding of the concept of atheism. It is equivalent to Trump saying the Democrats are the reason for separating immigrant children from their parents. But I will answer it anyway.
Atheism is not about a convenient choice to ignore the concept of god in order to have fun without consequences in this particular lifetime. Okay, maybe it is for some, I cannot speak for them. Most atheists I know started out as religious, but turned away because their minds or spirits were not fulfilled by either what religion had to offer, or a deity had to offer. Most are atheists because they fought the long hard battle, and came out of it standing alone. They started as an army of 1, and they ended as an army of 1. They looked at the millions around them they had massacred in effigy, and they stood proud, unafraid, relieved, and a little fatigued. But they stood victorious.
And, as many religious victors would have done after winning great battles, they did not pillage, rape, and plunder. They walked to the bottom of the mound of (figurative) dead theists, and then slept the sleep of the weary. There was no rejoicing, no bending of their conciousnesses, possibly not even a smile. But it was over. For some…
2c. Again I quote, “We can deduc[e] that Homo Sapiens [as a species] is not a product of evolution, but indeed a result of a deliberate act of “vandalism” perpetrated upon a humanoid species that once lived here.”
You can deduce that, a few myths and some totally amazing bits of architecture might even support that deduction, but fossil records put the lie to the statement that evolution did not cause Homo Sapiens to appear on this earth. The thing is, I could have an easier time proving that Jesus did not spend 40 years in the desert, but he did spend a lot of time learning at the feet of buddhist teachers in India, or Persia. The clues, if you care to look, are many. Most don’t want to look at them. But, yes, I for one have looked (indirectly) at Stonehenge, and the Pyramids, and a lot of other such constructions, and while the feats were definitely unworldly, they were still within the realm of human capability. Further, if such consructions were designed by alien engineers, why did they use such crude building blocks? Surely, with their technology, they could have sliced mountainous rocks into mirror-smooth blocks that fit perfectly together.
Deduce all you want, but at least use some grain of factual evidence to build your theory upon, please.

And I will have to stop this here. It is getting uncontrollably long. More to come…

I think there comes an obvious point in any discussion where participants realize that nothing new is going to come from it and it’s time to find a different topic… or go find a quiet restaurant and sit before a good and simple meal and a glass of wine. What think you?

If one wants to learn, they will search out a place where they can learn. If one is not ready to learn, the opportunity is there when they are.
I shall be trying to put these conversations into a series of posts on my blog. If you want to share them, when they are ready, please be my guest. You asked some good questions, and I tried my best to provide good answers. Sometimes you made me want to kick you in the butt, but I knew what you were doing and, hopefully, refrained from striking out. Sometimes I wanted to kiss you, but was not able to ask your permission.
How you felt, or feel, about me, that belongs to you. The future is filled with possibilities…

Comments 3 and 4 above need no further attention at this time.
5. I quote, “We do not have to wonder, or think, about spirit, it just is, like breathing.” NOTHING could be further from the truth. According to most aboriginal cultures, all aspects of life are subservient to the spirit, and spirit surrounds all aspects of life. If I knew how to transfer a .gif into a comment, I would show the spirit wheel which I am most attuned to. But I will do my best to describe it. Start with 3 circles with one centre point. The first and smallest circle is whole, and represents the centre of life, which is called spirit. The second circle surrounds the first circle, and represents the biophysicalpsychosocialmental aspects of life. It is divided into 4 equal parts: biophysical (or that which is available to the senses), psychological (or mental), sociological (or community), and spiritual (which can be called life-purpose). The third and outermost circle is again one complete area, and represents the way spirit affects and is affected by the spirit). Spirituality surrounds, and centres all aspects of life, while itself being a vital part of that life.
In our modern, Greek-based society, spirit has been relegated to, as was said above, something akin to breathing, it is always there, but who cares.
This has been a critical error of omission. If spirit is nothing but an afterthought, what is the uise in living? To have the most money, to belong to the correct church, to go to bed with the most partners, to die with…? Percy Bysshe Shelley wrote:
And on the pedestal, these words appear:
My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings;
Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.”

Sorry to tickle such sore points… but I need to say this then call it quits: For YOU spirit is the motivator of change. For ME spirit is the fuel and the mind is the part, the tool if you will, that moves “creation” or causes change in the cosmos. On that we must agree to disagree and really, it’s nothing more than semantics. I don’t care, as long as I am empowered to do what I must do and not forced to do that which I would choose not to do and as long as it is always my choice, not anyone else’s.

As you say, it is all semantics, especially since you’ve told me English is not your first language. Words that mean one thing to you, or maybe two, mean twenty things to me because the English language reuses words constantly. Last I checked, the wod “run” has over 103 meanings, that can wreak havoc on a non-English speaker. And that can complicate what should have been ah simple conversation,
The runner ran 20 feet, and stopped. Why?

Exactly! (as the great detective, Harry Crumb, was fond of saying). Because 20 feet was the end of the run? The car runs now, does that mean the mechanic installed legs on it? The shortage meant a run on gas stations, does that mean people ran to the stations to buy gas? One that stumped me for a long time (way back, this) Her nylon had a run in it. Say what? He ran for office – that must be exhausting and sweaty! Her eyes ran over the message – eyes with legs, must be hard to keep them in place especially when reading cheap romances. He ran into his wife at the liquor store – was she badly hurt with all that broken glass? There was a run of salmon – how do they do that in water and with no legs?
Fun word, if you’re English speaking, not so much if you’re trying to make sense of it.

Here’s a French one for you: “Le ver de terre vert va vers le verre de vin.” (I made up the sentence but it does make sense. Literally, “The green earthworm crawls towards the glass of wine.” You have to hand it (there’s another of those expressions!) to that earthworm though, he knows his priorities. I’m about to join him.
(ver: worm; vert: green; vers: towards; verre: glass, all pronounced exactly the same.)
In edit mode here: thinking about it, I recall that my example is called “homophones” – and all along I thought those were phones designed specifically for gay people, usually with rainbow colours and such like… just kiddin’!

Reminds me of French class in university. We were in the speech lab, had to listen to a sentence in French, and write it down in English. No idea what the words were now, but I listened to it, made sure it made sense, and translated it into English. Got a big 0. Went to see my prof, What was wrong with my translation?
It is not the sentence I dictated.
It is the sentence I heard. Can you not hesr that sentence in what you dictated?
Yes, it is a very good translation of the sentence you heard.
Then why did I get a 0?
Because it was not the sentence I wanted you to hear.
When she read my sentence into the tape, every sound was exactly the same. Exactly. But she refused to give me even half-a-point for accuracy.
So I called her a “pusczyky” (spelling variable), and walked out on her.
Meanwhile, the reason the runner (long narrow carpet) stopped after it ran 20′ (the length of the long narrow carpet) was because it ran (ended at, bumped up against) into a wall.
Of course, the sentence could have meant the sprinter twisted his ankle after running 20 ft., but he lost the race so who cares…
YUP, languages can be confusing…

Yeah, languages. That prof was an idiot, certifiable. I had a similar experience in 1st year U – called grade 13 then, getting a 98% mark on my English Lit (!) and failing my English Grammar with a 49% grade. So I too queried that. If I could understand English and write essays on demand that got me a 98%, didn’t that mean that I knew English? NO, I failed on technicalities of grammar, such as distinguishing between verbs, adverbs, pronouns, who knows what else. My argument, which probably would have gotten me a pass in a court of law was this: You’re telling me that I just passed my driver’s test with flying colours but because I don’t know an axle from a cam shaft, I can’t get a licence? Being academicians, naturally they wouldn’t budge, short of having a shot gun propped up their academic asses. I quit on the spot. End of university career. By the way, no regrets, I would have been a lawyer, hah! But I’ve wondered about languages since that time, and why some are so utterly alien to others. Other than languages being so different, the rest of us aren’t, and we’re all biologically compatible. Go figure that!

With apologies to the Brit who is all over Jill’s blog, who used to be a prof, I believe, or whoever the prof following her blog is (my old memory cells are on the blink again), anyways, apologies to him, but most profs are so full of themselves they can’t admit they are wrong when the correct answer is shoved down their throats. I can think of many instances. High school teachers for that matter too.
But my favourite one was when I helped correct an answer on an IQ test. I had to take the test for some stupid reason, and for some stupid reason I was shown the results. When I came to one particular question that involved numbers, I knew I was right, but there was this X beside the answer. Just cuz I am me, I fought the answer with the psychologist in charge of the test. Even convinced him to call the test-writing company, I was so sure of it. They told him I was the second person in many years to challenge the answer. They had checked it out with all kinds of maths whizzes and geniuses. Half said one answer (the one in the answer booklet) and half the the other answer (the one I chose). They had finally rewritten the whole computer program for that question, and lo and behold, the answer sheet was wrong. They were just in the process of rewriting the answer sheet when my psych called.
I didn’t really care, though I often wonder how many others were wrongly marked wrong. But there is a part of me that loves to prove authorities wrong, and I enjoyed this one probably the most in my life. Eat that. Trump.

Fun answer, rawgod. The way I sees it (sip, sip – darn, Canada day is almost over? Double darn) Anyway, the way I see it now tests should come under the freedom of speech act and no answer can ever be wrong. Everybody graduates and everybody is unique, just like everybody else… is this conversation going anywhere… I don’t see a link…

6. I quote, “No longer any sense of self. That is the final death.”
In my philosophy, no death is final. Life is a series of planes of existence, and the purpose of life is to create these planes, and inhabit them. One does that by understanding the plane one is on, and imagining what the next plane could provide for life. Thus, from this plane where we presently exist, and share our lives, the number of possible planes to advance to are equal to the number of lives that have already advanced, or are preparing to advance.
But how many lives could that be? The lowest number is 1. The highest number is “n+1”. a virtual infinity. It all depends on how many lives fill a spirit-bank. This is unknowable on earth.
This idea is entirely predicated on the belief that a) life has a purpose; and b) that purpose is to advance or progress or evolve from the being you were born as and changing to the being you die as, with the change being equal to the amount you increased your spiritual understanding while on this plane.
Is it possible to not advance one’s spirit? Unfortunately the answer is Yes. Is it possible to go backwards in your understanding of spirit? I hope it is not possible, but the apparent answer is again Yes. In fact, anything is possible here on this plane, because there are so many traps aqnd pitfalls one can disappear into. But on the good side, it is possible to avoid those traps and pitfalls. The most important thing, IMO, is to learn from those traps and pitfalls. If a being should continue to fall into the same pitfall, one is not learning from the experience. Meanwhile, once the trap is finally conquered, that trap should not detour one ever again.
One of the worst traps we can fall into comes from religion: humans are born to suffer. This is a patently untrue statement, designed to keep those who are suffering from finding the way out. “Trust in god,” they say, “he knows what is in store for you.” Don’t believe it. No sane being could live with the insanity some people go through in his name. The pain, the horror, the unpardonable things that happen to people, intended or unintended, just on our planet alone would be unbearable to a sane mind. And how many planets have life on them? Is it possible we are the only one? Possible, but highly unlikely. And we are only talking about beings we recognize as sentient. Just because a being does not appear to be sentient, or plain is not sentient, should that penalize them to a life of suffering, with no way out?
Sorry folks, but that is not a part of my philosophy in any way. Some people suffer, others do not. Everyone can move beyond that suffering. Not by accepting a belief in a god, not by making all the money in the world, but by accepting where you are, and looking for a way to improve your spirit, and connecting your spirit to others who have spirits that look good to you. Easy, never! Possible, always!
Meanwhile, if you are expecting to find any kind of reward for having lived, such a place, if there is one or more than one, is so far away from this plane of life as to be unreachable from here.
The only reward is life itself, and as long as your spirit is alive, it is possible for you to grow as a spiritual being…

Christian awe : ‘ All things bright and beautiful , All creatures great and small , All things wise and wonderful etc ; the trouble is there are a lot of things that are ghastly and horrible and people that wallow in them. Spare a thought for the poor cockroach after all he has to live and the lice need to be comfortable.
Not long ago there was an awe – struck atheist called Carl Satan he made famous the pale blue dot in fact he waxed poetical ( he was a poet at heart)—‘ on that dot every human being that ever lived, lived out their lives’ . Carl loved the vastness of space and the infinitude of time because they enabled him to revel in the insignificance of man. Have you noticed how popular are the galactic pictures from NASA are ? even though many of them are not what the human eye would see with a telescope. Scientists rave about the revelations of the microscope – what a world of beauty the powerful lenses reveal. Awe is something we develop as we mature and look around , it is what the mind makes of reality ; remember we don’t see toddlers gazing at sunsets or listening to Beethoven. Awe comes with the development of self awareness but it goes beyond that to a sense of time and place , future and past , perspective .
‘ When my bell of admittance is heard in the gloom,
And a crossing breeze cuts a pause in its outrollings,
Till they rise again as if they were a new bells boom,
” He hears it not now, but used to notice such things”.
How he paints the gloom of death but perhaps his neighbors will remember him at least that’s some small compensation .

Thanks for the comment, Kertsen. Unfortunately I don’t know much about Carl Sagan and I’m not a “follower” of NASA, so skipping that, I sense that Sagan was one of those “selective” atheists who understandably reject the concept of an ultra dictatorial super being (who can’t seem to get his “s**t” together long enough to provide one rational moment) and the spin-off faith-based organized religions that have caused so much pain and terror in the world. I think he accepted there was “spirit” underlying nature/the material world. I would disagree that a toddler is incapable of awe. I’ve looked in the eyes of toddlers and seen universes of innocent awe in them. I think we lose awe as we grow up, regaining some eventually as we age, though many people do not age gracefully and have little concept of awe of anything, at least in this society of the terminally entitled.

If he was a selective atheist ( nice term that ) then there are a hell of a lot of them and I’ve yet to meet a non-selective atheist: I’d go a step further a non-selective person. Some go on a awe trip with The Rolling Stones others with The Appassionata the list is endless because awe is a human phenomenon. When I see a multitude of arms waving in rhythm at a pop concert awe comes to mind in the same way as when I hear the shaky whisper of Attenborough’s voice in the Blue Planet .
The innocent awe in the toddlers eyes is your awe not theirs and is very similar to the lovers awe as they gaze oblivious of all else but themselves. I’m choc-a block full of awe every flower , every leaf , every garden creature even the gleaming blue bottle and the hovering mosquito , the wrinkles in an old worn face , they all move me and I’m far from being alone.
I must not get carried away we have other less endearing qualities; watching the crowd in a good football match shows a tremendous range of human emotion. In sport we see all the superlatives , an all time great , the greatest goal of the season , and in extreme emotion a shout of intense joy , a whoop when language fails.
The great preventer of awe is anger and small – mindedness along with degrading criticism.

That’s it, Kertsen, I’m having your bust placed dead center among those ancient Greek philosophers, or perhaps between Socrates and “The Thinker”… Don’t let it go to your head, I haven’t found the museum yet and there’s a few hurdles to be cleared, like getting the right sculptor, and how you feel about sitting still for hours on end. No, I’m afraid a selfie won’t do.

If I had to choose a skull I would choose Yorick the dead court jester in Hamlet ; I would certainly be remembered having not said a word. Not only that I would have been ‘ a fellow of infinite jest ‘ without ever having cracked a joke and not least I would when alive have had ‘ flashes of merriment , that were won’t to set the table on a roar.’

Hi Sha’Tara,
I am an atheist. By that I mean that I deny the existence of God or gods. There may be – probably is/was – a creator, ie some force beyond our understanding that set the whole process going. But I reject any suggestion that that being/force is able to communicate with and direct the lives of the intelligent species we call homo sapiens. That does not mean I cannot feel awe at the beauty of the universe, from the vastness of space to the infinitesimal smallness of sub-atomic particles. Or the colours of a rainbow and the flowers in my garden. But there are forces in nature that are destructive as well as beautiful. And those forces seem to have infected some members of our species, too. Did the creator intend that? Or is it (the creation) an experiment gone wrong? How can anyone interpret the purpose, the reason, for His/Her/Its creation? The best we can do is to do whatever is within our ability to mitigate the worst effects of those destructive forces – as you do, for example, in your own voluntary work with families directly effected by natural disasters.
The ‘spirit’ doesn’t tell me that, ‘faith’ in a ‘god’ does not tell me that, my intelligence tells me that.
I abhor those who preach, believing they have ‘the answer’, whether that answer is ‘religion’ or pseudoscience – and that includes those atheists who are scornful of people who find comfort in ‘faith’ in ‘angels’ or other ethereal ‘beings’. I hope I do not come across that way, but, just as not all ‘believers’ are beyond reason, so not all atheists are beyond argument.

Thanks for that well-expressed comment and explanation. Quote: ” just as not all ‘believers’ are beyond reason, so not all atheists are beyond argument.” Personally I want to live in a world where argument is no longer necessary and reason is where we choose to live.

The thing is i dont so much mind the soul forced recycling reincarnation loops in this quarantine. Its the memory wiping from lives, forgetting your loved ones, friends, and who you are, that i dont like. If we can stop the memory wiping between incarnations, then that dramatically reduces any ”fear” of death, and it all becomes a fun game. Apparently, Solar Warden, the SSP projects have discovered how to fully DNA activate people to access all their memories back again and has seen and operates outside this Quarantine Veil that seemed to get set up during Atlantis times with misuse of advanced technology and interdimensional wars. Etc.
——————————————
LIFE AFTER DEATH: Consciousness survives after physical organs stop functioning; study proves the mind does not die with the body https://www.naturalnews.com/054090_life_after_death_scientific_evidence_mind_activity.html

One individual reported consciousness and awareness three minutes after their heart had stopped
“One case was validated and timed using auditory stimuli during cardiac arrest,” the study reports

“This is significant, since it has often been assumed that experiences in relation to death are likely hallucinations or illusions, occurring either before the heart stops or after the heart has been successfully restarted, but not an experience corresponding with ‘real’ events when the heart isn’t beating,” said Dr. Parnia.

Thanks for your comment, Adam. From you, partial quote here: “If we can stop the memory wiping between incarnations, then that dramatically reduces any ”fear” of death, and it all becomes a fun game.”

I can’t see death ever becoming ‘a fun game’ but certainly if we could remember it would change how we approach death. The problem as I see it, and as I was taught, is, again, the issue of the soul implant. When we die while still under the effects of the implant, it is shut down. When we reincarnate, unless we are evolved enough to overcome it, we come under the effects of a new implant, in most cases I must assume, with a “tabula rasa” programming. To the newly reincarnated, this blank state means that s/he had no memory of any previous incarnation. Personal, proper and detailed past life remembrances require by-passing the implant.

Again, that is personal information, what I know to be true for me. I must add here that for me, “scientific” evidence is irrelevant. I know what I have experienced, what I have seen when outside the body and I don’t need further evidence. But it’s good to know that science is advancing, taking baby steps, in this direction. At least that describes more of an open mind that is usual. The dictatorial system that has kept us in the dark through the millennia since Atlantis is breaking down… slowly, incrementally.

Hello. Adam, just thought I would write you a note about not remembering from incarnation to incarnation. (If you have read my lengthy discussions with Sha’Tara above, you will have an idea of where I am coming from, but all that reading isn’t important to this question.) I believe thus, in my opinion:

When sentient life as we know it was young and homo-sapiens were just arriving on the scene, I believe there was no memory-block between lives. (Remember the tale of the Tower of Babel in the bible?). Not only was there no memory-block, but there was also no language, or need of it. Telepathy was the main method of communication, and all individuals could read each others’ minds like an open book.
I am not going to try and guess (yet) which came first, the memory block or the end of telepathy, but I can theorize a time when there were things individuals wanted to hide from others, but could not. I say this from experience, there have been three or four people I have encountered in life with whom I shared a version of telepathy. They were all persons whom at the time felt as close as soul-mates, when I still believed in such things. Anyway, we could read each others minds on certain, but not all levels. Then one day, I got off early from work, and knowing that my spouse was still working for another 4 hours I had time to kill. So I went to a bar I had never been to previously, ordered a cola (I do not drink alcohol), and sat watching the tube, some sport or other.
Suddenly, half-dozing, I felt a body next to mine on the booth seat, and I looked up to see it was my spouse, smiling at me. “I got off work early too,” she said aloud. “I just looked for your light, and came straight here,” she said, or words to that effect. In retrospect I know the process my mind went through, but it happened so fast I did not have time to think. I put a wall around my mind, and that was the end of our telepathic communication. Why? A gut reaction. If she could find me so easily when I wasn’t even trying to hide, what could she do if for some reason I did want to hide from her? It was fear, fear that two minds were on exactly the same wavelength, and what could that mean for our future. We stayed together 7 years after that, but the telepathy was gone, and eventually so was the love. All because of an instant of stupid, unreasonable fear.
That, or something like it, is what I think happened to natural telepathy. Someone started putting up walls, and others started doing it too, until no one could communicate that way anymore. Then language became a necsessity, and those in different places invented their own languages.
Similarly, and this is not from the experience of birth, but from a couple of drug-induced spiritual events I had, I was in the process of mentally dying when I suddenly chose life, at least the first event. The second event I intentionally created the same conditions, with the same result. This time, though, I went knowing the choice I would have to make, and knowing I would again choose life.
These near-dying events, not specifically Near-Death Experiences per se, allowed me to return to this plane of existence with only partial memory-blocks. At first I just put them down to LSD-induced hallucinations, but hallucinations go away. The memories I brought back with me are still with me today. And to say they almost drove me mad would be an understatement. I did go what I thought was insane, but later came to call unsane. I had all these impossible memories in my head, not making any sense, overwhelming my mind. I lost my income, my friends, lived on the streets, ate out of garbage cans. But slowly I sorted everything out. Very slowly. I recovered my ability to function in the normal world, and went back to university with a totally new viewpoint on life. But I digress.
Were a baby’s mind, just barely formimg, to be bombarded with the memories of what came before birth, there is no way it could survive in a materialistic culture such as we presently have. Adult people are locked away for having tidbits of what I went through. A baby would probably die right after birth.
However, getting back to the dawn of homo sapien life, I think we know about reincarnation, and spirituality, because once upon a time it was common to all. There was no “true” society an individual had to answer to, and with telepathy to be able to share various individual experiences with others, the sharing made things at least bearable. It harkens forward to the sharing circles of today. Tell someone your problems, and they become easier to handle. The more people you tell, the easier it gets. You find room for solutions, or others suggest solutions, and life improves again. But when telepathy ended, in order to survive, memory blocks were raised, and thus evolution saved homo sapiens from extinction.
That is my best effort, at present, in answering your question. But I would like to say, this is the first time I have ever thought on this, like something thrown out at a brain-storming session, or a first and very rough draft of a novel idea (pun intended).
Do with it what you will. It is only my opinion.

Hey rawgod, although I did reply to Adam myself and presented a different viewpoint, there is something in this comment of yours that really perked up my ears, and quote: “Were a baby’s mind, just barely forming, to be bombarded with the memories of what came before birth, there is no way it could survive in a materialistic culture such as we presently have.” Assuming you mean immediate past life when you say what came before birth, I’ll comment on this: I was born such a baby and I did survive, probably because my small world was quite Celticly speaking, spiritual if on the superstitious side of things, and there was also the old style Latinized Catholicism and it was not a materialistic culture, but very much still based on the old farming by hand world. Wooden shoes were carved by hand; farmers took their grain to the local mill to be ground into flour and bread and other pastries were baked at home. That kind of environment meant that a certain amount of “spiritual” energy would be diverted my way and I floated in that sort of spirit amniotic fluid. When I grew up enough to have dreams I began to have a nightmare that would last until it was explained to me after the age of 30. That’s a long time to have one specific type of nightmare and it was totally related to my immediate past life as a young woman who died of torture in Paris in July of 1943. I reincarnated a mere 3-1/2 years later, in October of 1946 (Yep, I’m that old in this body!). So anyway, I think you are correct that babies who are born with particularly traumatic remnants of disconnected memories from past lives have a hard time of it, and many die. Babies die of no known cause all the time, usually called “crib death.”

Memories of an immediate past life I will not deny. But it is not exactly what I am talking about. I am speaking of life within what I call the spirit-bank. That means life outside this plane of existence, and that comes with the knowledge of such life. Not having my essence deeply submerged in the spirit-bank, I was still able to see the difference between the two realms. A baby, with no knowledge of this realm, would, IMO, die of overstimulation.
But I am not saying I am right, maybe babies all have those pieces of knowledge, but have them sublimated in some way, as memory wipes upon birth. As for SIDS, I am not going to go there. That is beyond my understanding completely.

Judging by the success rate of Earhian beings born and surviving I think it’s safe to say that babies have it figured out, that is, we had it figured out. From what I gather, there isn’t supposed to be much happening in what you call “the spirit bank” as long as we remain securely tied in the the reincarnation cycle involving the soul implant. From death to rebirth is, for most, another blanked out area. Include in a new soul implant ant it’s hardly surprising most people are born thinking their mind is a tabula rasa. It’s only when we break free of the programming as you seem to have done that it becomes possible to question the system and wonder about alternative conditions.

Again, I must dither with you about semantics, lol. Spirit-bank is a place of many happenings, because every new arriving spirit changes the “beingness” of the spirit in the bank. Yes, babies (of every species) are given the spirit of life EQUAL TO THE SPIRIT IN THE BANK AS IT IS SENT OUT. But with the return of the next spirit in the after-death, the next tiny spirit that is sent out is different from the previous one. In this example, the second baby spirit has EVERYTHING the first baby spirit had, PLUS whatever the next arrival had added to the bank. whether that whatever was good, bad, or indifferent. But the second baby was different from the first.
And since we were not on the subject anyway, the “implantation,” as you call it, does not take place the instant the sperm hits the ova, or however the species in question propagates. There is a decision to be made, by the spirits of the parents and the spirit(s) of the baby(s). All three spirits have to agree that the placement is a “desired” placement, at the time of the decision. Unfortunately, some parental spirits don’t really give a shit, and can agree to anything. Other times, circumstances change between the time of decision and the birth. Sometimes the changes are chemical, and affect the baby’s growth and/or development. Sometimes the changes are mental, but the spirit of the baby doesn’t get to say, “No, wait, this isn’t what I agreed to.” And sometimes, the spirit of the baby knows exactly what situation it is being born into, and despite all reason chooses it for reasons only the baby’s spirit knows. Sometimes the change actually causes death for either the mother or the child, such as death during childbirth, or even abortion. As I say, almost nothing is written in stone.
I chose the situation where I would be beat mercilessly at times, suffering from both physical and mental cruelty. Why? I can only imagine, but the results of my choice, though risky, turned out to be even more than my baby-spirit thought it could, I think. Which is why every time I have had my fortune told, or my Tarot cards read, “by a true expert,” the outcome is ALWAYS hidden. I think that if ever had a hint of what would happen to me, that would have affected the outcome as I am experiencing it. You know the saying of the observer affecting the experiment he is watching, or doing. I can sometimes see around corners of my life, but I CANNOT see around the corner of my death, except in general terms…

Yes, we affect the outcome, no matter what. I’ve been to psychics, long ago, and they were all quite accurate in describing what I’d been, and who I was at that present moment, but none of their “predictions” ever manifested – not even close. I can “see” into the future, but it’s on a truly vast scale, and subject to change as the events that are prepping the foundations of that future, change. If the foundation changes, the building has to change to accommodate that – no way around it. As to the spirit bank, you have your way of understanding that space, I have mine and neither of us is about to change whatever happens there!

Hey Adam, I totally understand the “time” thing. I’m up to my armpits in alligators here too (and I wasn’t even trying to drain the swamp!). I may have to post a post apologizing to all for my lack of responses to great comments lately… So, take your time… 🙂